Why do we get angry?

Wisdom – Solomon wanted wisdom ‘heart to discern right from wrong.’ Not just what is the law but what is right.Understand anger and handle it in yourself and in others = wisdomPower, goodness, why it goes wrong and how healed

1.Dangerous power –a) Anger dynamite of the soul.

Can disintegrate your body.

More harmful on your heart than any other reason.

Damages community – in anger you throw words around that wound

Disintegrates your wisdom and ability to make wise choices – think of what you have said after and regret.

You feel like a fool because you were!

Destroys your will – ability to make wise choices (Prov. 7)

b) Most like an addictive substance – you can admit your sorrow but it is easy to justify. Deny anger and so you give yourself the right to get angry so an addiction. You have to get anger in order to justify your anger.

c) Was an emphasis on expressing your anger but this can lead to the addiction!2. Anger (Prov. 5) is also a good thing. Slow anger is better than no anger nor explosive.

It is a sin never to get angry, it’s a sin to blow up but we should be slow to anger.

Eph 4:26 be angry but sin not – John Chrisostom (early Christian writer) he that is angry without cause, sins and he that is not angry with cause also sins, for unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices.

Slow to anger – is an attribute of God. Ex 34 – God says to Moses he is the Lord, slow to anger.

If you have a God who never gets angry then you have a God who cannot love.

How do we feel when we see someone we love hurt by others, we get angry and rightly so. To be cold is the worst thing because we become numbed.

Anger is love in motion toward a threat to something you love. It is appropriate to use anger to fight back.

It is a form of Love – ask of yourself about what makes you most angry because those are the things you love the most.

Jesus gets angry because he is passionate about justice and righteousness.

Some cultures suggest that letting out your anger is best, or hiding it in the family, neither is biblical.

3. Why does it go wrong?

It goes wrong because it is disordered.

We look to certain things to give us what only God can do.

Inappropriate anger – i.e. break up with someone and you are sad, or if you break up and want to kill yourself. This second is wrong.

If anger a form of love then disordered anger leads to disordered love.

Why are we more angry when we are snubbed than suffering in another part of the world. Why? (Augustine) if we look for good reputation as the be all and end all then we get angry over things that stand between you and that aim.

It is always uncontrollable and is disordered in its goal.

Loving anger is focussed – wayward child you don’t destroy the child you destroy the cause!

Disordered anger just ploughs in and destroys and in that we remember other unresolved things.

We take it out on others when we have not forgiven things done in the past to us. Even if the person is a different one!

If you build your life on things and God never gives us what we think will make us happy we have a feeling of being unjustly treated by God and the world.

This comes out in every angry outburst.

4. How do we heal it?

Admit it – admit you are doing this wrong.

The key is being angry well but you have to know your anger.

If you won’t admit anger, when someone wrongs you, you say they deserve anger but you say you are not angry – cos you’re better than them!

You feed the addiction even though you say you are not angry.

Analyse your anger.

What makes you angry is not what happened to you but what you believe happened to you.

It comes from what you believe not what people are doing to you.

When you get angry ask what is this big thing that is happening that is so important to me. What am I defending? Probably your ego and pride!

In restaurant when waitress slow we get angry, but the truth is I didn’t plan my day well and leave enough time to eat, so it is me not her!

Do you seek great things for yourself – then don’t!

I’m angry – why? What am I defending?

Nothing should be more important to you than God’s love for you – not even the love of another.

You have to transform it – Prov. 15:1 harsh word response is soft answer.

This is beyond self control – this is saving your enemies!

Real changes happen when you have children – long date until children!

Sacrifice comes with children – Kid becomes a teenager, you cross their will and they turn on you and suggest they hate you! If that happens, and they suggest you have never done anything for them – it hurts and here is the test.

You can withdraw cos it hurts – give in to them – loose them

Go in with guns blazing – harsh word to combat harsh words you are better at it than them- loose them

Do a surgical strike – come in close and insist on the truth gently. Absorb their anger without paying back and calmly seek the truth – you can save them.

5. We are angry with God cos he hasn’t given us what we want – it is so unjustified – when God became killable we killed him, that’s how we know this is true. God didn’t withdraw or give back the anger, he told us the truth without paying back. He also took the anger that WE deserved not just our anger. Jesus took our anger without giving back. Are you in wonder how he dealt with our rage. Then how should we respond to others when we are angry?

Ego needs are no longer there because you have seen God’s ultimate strike. Martin Luther-King Like your enemies that you may be children of your father in heaven – life is dog eat dog but gentleness doesn’t work today. We have tried the like for like – it hasn’t worked. We will abhor segregation but love the segregationists. We will continue to love you no matter what you do, eventually we will win....

See Jesus absorbing our disordered love we can go out and hate sin and love the sinner. We can live slow to anger and with great goodness.